


The Prison Tape

by GeneralRADIX



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Horror, M/M, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 22:09:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20842808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralRADIX/pseuds/GeneralRADIX
Summary: Under normal circumstances, Vince finds digitizing VHS tapes to be a quiet, relaxing way to spend time.The final tape of this box is a bit different than the rest.





	The Prison Tape

The sight of Vince walking out of the teleport bay with a box full of VHS tapes garnered about the reaction he had expected from Durandal, which was to sigh in exasperation and ask, “You brought more of those things up here?”

“Not to keep,” Vince said. “I was talking with a guy down below who wanted someone to digitize his dad's old recordings before the tapes completely wear out.”

He began making his way down to the data conversion lab, and Durandal followed him. “So, how long will this take you? Not the entire day, I hope.”

Alas. “It's, um, probably going to take upwards of five hours, not counting breaks. I'd rather be in the lab to make sure the computer doesn't throw up any errors.”

“You mean I won't get to see you again for _five hours_?”

“There's nothing stopping you from sitting with me, dude.”

“Nothing, aside from the fact that it's _boring as sin_.”

Vince couldn't help but laugh a bit. “You handle stuff that's more tedious than this on a daily basis, dude.”

Durandal huffed. “It's bearable when it's necessary for the continued operation of the ship.”

This little back-and-forth continued until they reached the lab; Vince ducked inside, and Durandal split off with the claim that he was going to the library, while muttering something about how it didn't matter this time how loudly Xel'o complained about his pacing.

–

One of Vince's very few positive memories of Tharsis was taping shows. He hadn't really seen the appeal of it as a teenager—DVD recorders were widely available, and the media they used didn't deteriorate so much with use. Then they finally started airing shows that caught his interest, and all his attempts to record them to disc were thwarted by the network DRM. Analog, it turned out, was cheaper and easier to deal with in some respects.

Of course, all those tapes had gotten left behind. So, once he'd gotten settled in on the Rozinante, one of the first things Vince did was set up the digitizer lab. It wasn't too impressive-looking—just an ancient CRT, multiple VCRs, and a spare computer/monitor setup—but it didn't really need to be. Upon starting the process for each tape, Vince could sit back and do math equations while listening to its contents, sometimes re-watching the whole thing if it had been at the back of the digitizing queue long enough. Not a bad way to spend a weekend, he thought.

Most of the things that his client's father had taped were reruns of astonishingly old sketch comedy shows, sports broadcasts (including glacially-paced live fishing shows), soap operas with roughly forty years' worth of continuity that Vince wasn't privy to, and the occasional bout of professional wrestling. None of these were really up his alley, but that just made them easier to tune out; every now and then he'd leave the lab to stretch his legs or take care of other things. Of course, Durandal caught him on a return trip and, upon hearing about what kind of stuff Vince was transferring to digital, opted not to go back with him. The jokey threat to sit outside the door until Vince was finished dissipated when he informed Durandal that he was only about halfway done.

It had to have been about two in the afternoon when the easy, repetitive process was momentarily disrupted. Near the end of one tape, it suddenly cut from the middle of a car commercial to what sounded like a music video for some twangy, wheedly tune with indecipherable lyrics. Vince figured that this was some MTV segment that had gotten recorded over part of another program by accident, until he happened to glance up and noticed something odd: there was no network ident.

He leaned over for a better look. Picture quality was slightly better—enough to tell that the claymation was incredibly amateurish and that the fighting in the live-action bits was obviously staged. Maybe someone had dubbed their art project onto this tape?

Just as he'd tried giving it some thought, the video gave way to an empty blue screen. Probably a sign that it wasn't worth too much mental effort; Vince hit 'stop' on the digitizer program, rewound the tape, and leaned over to grab the next one out of the box.

The hours slowly ticked away—and ended up exceeding five, Vince noted—without any further excitement, apart from an entire made-for-TV movie near the end of the queue. Amazing how much cheese an ostensibly-serious detective story could compress into eighty-five minutes. A few miscellaneous programs, some sort of late-night auction house feed, end of tape. Vince ejected it, popped the last one in, and once everything was set up, hit play and returned to his equations.

Silence.

He gave it a few more seconds, then checked the TV. Lots of warbling bars in varying shades of grey, like a colour test recorded on a monochrome television—and it was staying like that for a rather long time. He thought that perhaps this tape was already too worn-down to be salvageable, but if that were the case, wouldn't he just get a lot of sta--?

The screen cut to moving footage of a hallway, shot from what must have been a low-rent camcorder with how wretched the picture quality was; it took Vince a moment to figure out what kind of hallway it even was—looked like a cross between an office and a hospital. What little of the time stamp was on-screen indicated that this was recorded ten years ago. Still no sound.

Just as he'd sorted out a couple of possibilities as to what this could be, the cameraman turned and entered a lab so white that parts of it appeared to be suspended in nothingness; they passed multiple dark-topped islands and came to a stop at one covered in fuzzy lines of gray that might've been surgical instruments.

They didn't hold Vince's attention for long. Right next to the tray of maybe-tools was a clear plastic box containing two off-white...things. Between the graininess and the VHS artifacts, their shapes bled into each other and the box, but Vince could clearly see the hideous, heavily black-rimmed eye of the one in front, at once glaring daggers and staring out into nothingness. And its owner was twitching ever so slightly.

Now he was starting to feel concerned. Were these lab rabbits? They didn't seem to have ears…

Someone in a white coat walked up to the table and chose a tool from the tray; they apparently spoke with the cameraman just long enough for Vince to lean in slightly for a better look, then jerk away violently—that was definitely a syringe in that other person's hand, and it was clearly too large for--

The needle plunged into the side of the off-white creature in the front and it began thrashing wildly, jostling the needle enough that dark fluid squirted out onto its unmoving companion. More of it drew into the syringe until the creature fell still—and even though Vince still had no idea what the hell it was, he understood that he'd just watched a living creature die on camera.

His first instinct was to shut the digitizer program off and tear this horrible thing out of the VCR, but he couldn't quite will himself to turn away long enough to do it. Was this evidence of a legally-dubious experiment or crime scene? Just a messed-up horror film? 

He got his answer when the person in the white coat and the cameraman left the lab and walked further down the hallway. There was a plaque on the wall next to the doorway that Vince hadn't noticed before, and the camera happened to swing just close enough for him to make out four particular letters:

UESC.

This had been filmed inside a UESC facility.

Vince sank back in his chair, a cold sweat beginning to form on his brow. Too many questions pinging around in his head—where had this guy's dad gotten such a tape? Was there something his client didn't know? How did it even leave the facility in the first place?

The footage cut out just long enough for Vince to think it was over, and reach for the stop button—but no, the damn thing came back, this time from the perspective of a security camera focused on a much wider white room. Nothing in it but a man wearing what might've been a prison uniform; he was handcuffed to something that bore a disturbing resemblance to an electric chair.

Two people—neither of which were the person in the white coat—strode inside. There was a glass of black-on-video liquid in the hands of the guy who approached the bound man; they held a short context-less conversation, then the guy with the mystery drink unlocked one of the handcuffs and handed it to the prisoner, who immediately took a swig.

Some more silent talking, and then the prisoner began convulsing in a way Vince didn't like; he kept going like that for far too long, the tremors worsening with every minute, until he stopped...violently lurched forward, vomited blood, doubled over. Stopped moving again. Died.

Those two bastards watching it all happen showed no obvious reaction to what they'd just done, except to talk amongst themselves. Without audio, and with their faces distorted into twitching grey blobs, Vince couldn't even tell if it was about the prisoner.

Footage cut out again to a second white room with another imminent victim, this one trapped in a glass chamber built into the far wall. Like last time, two people entered—perhaps the same people. Unlike last time, one of them held a large canister.

Vince knew that it would contain gas, and that once inserted into the chamber's receptacle, it would vent its lethal contents inside. What he didn't expect was for Prisoner no. 2 to leave that massive a stain on the glass around the fifth time they slammed bodily into it.

Bile threatened to rise to the top of his throat; Vince tamped it down as best he could, buried his face into his hands, and took a couple of deep breaths. When he peeked through his fingers, he caught a glimpse of a spreading pool of darkness underneath half of Prisoner no. 3.

He stopped the tape.

–

The story he gave to his client was far from the whole truth, but there was no way in hell that Vince was going to subject a civilian to what he'd witnessed. Just said that the last tape was UESC property that needed to be turned back in. Client nodded, paid Vince for his services, and confirmed that his dad hadn't ever been a UESC agent, just a commercial fisherman.

Once back on the Rozinante, Vince headed straight for the nearest terminal from which he could place a call.

“Who would you need to contact at this hour?” Durandal asked, a hint of unease in his tone.

Vince typed in the number with trembling hands. “Hightower.”

He knew how Durandal would react, and still winced slightly when Durandal jolted. “_Him_?! But—why?”

“He's the only government liaison we have right now, and I need to show him something.”

“What could possibly--”

Vince put a firm hand on Durandal's shoulder. “Trust me when I say you don't want to know. Just...let me deal with it. And him, if need be.”

For a moment, Durandal's mouth hung open slightly as if he was trying to articulate further protests, but to Vince's relief, he wordlessly nodded and—after a moment's hesitation—retreated for his quarters.

Hightower's tired face appeared on the terminal screen no long after. “What is it, Callahan?”

“Get your ass down here, now.” No point in nor inclination to hide his agitation. “You might have some explaining to do.”

–

Cortana happened to be lingering by the lab entrance when Vince led Hightower to it; she glared daggers at the ship's not-so-welcome guest before muttering, “You start giving him a hard time, I go in.”

“Duly noted,” Hightower grumbled.

The door slid shut behind them; once back in his seat, Vince rewound the tape—that didn't last nearly as long as how it felt to watch—and shut his eyes upon hitting 'play'.

He waited. And waited, some small part of him hoping that this really would turn out to be a false alarm.

“...Oh, I see.”

The muscles in Vince's arm tensed; taking great care not to look at the screen, he turned around to face Hightower. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You said the fellow who previously owned this tape was a fisherman, right?” A hint of nausea undermined Hightower's stone face.

“Yeah.” Vince jabbed a finger at the TV. “What is this?!”

“Callahan, understand that what little I am legally permitted to tell you must not leave this lab. There was...an incident about a decade ago, involving egregious misuse of UESC resources. Immediately following its discovery, the perpetrators were tried and imprisoned at Pluto. It's long been taken care of--”

'Egregious misuse of resources'. Did those 'resources' include the victims?

Vince growled, “I just watched a snuff film, Hightower. 'We took care of it' isn't fucking good enough.”

“Well, I'm afraid it's all you're getting. Unless you feel like joining the UESC and working your way high up enough to gain the sort of clearance I have,” Hightower added; he then reached over to stop and eject the tape himself. “I'll also have to return this to the archives. Your assistance in recovering this footage will be noted.”

And that was the last thing Hightower said to him that night, barring a short nod of acknowledgment at the teleport bay. Vince watched him leave with that damn tape in hand, unsure of how to feel.

–

–

–

Whatever had transpired in the lab, Durandal was determined to help take Vince's mind off of it; the two made a fair amount of small talk about various subjects while walking around the ship, and Durandal managed to make dinner for him without accidentally going overboard with the spices (though, 'ramen with ranch dressing' was hard to mess up). Afterward, he followed Vince to his quarters; sharing a bed with another person was still a concept Durandal was adjusting to, but he'd never say that the warmth and close proximity to his Security Officer were _bad_ things. All in all, it seemed to have helped.

Durandal awoke a few hours later to bright light shining in his face; he raised a hand to shield his eyes, preparing to roll over—then he spotted Vince leaning over the bathroom sink.

In the span of a second, he was out of bed and by Vince's side. “Are you okay?”

Vince looked at him uneasily; the sole bit of relief Durandal felt in that moment came from the lack of mess in the sink. “Y-yeah? Just—thought about something I shouldn't have. Go back to bed; I'll be there in a second.”

With some hesitation, Durandal climbed back under the covers, and Vince hit the switch to the bathroom door; thankfully, he emerged about a minute later with no mishaps that Durandal could hear. 

Just before he drifted back off to sleep, he heard Vince murmur, “'Misuse of resources', he called it...wonder what else they've got in their archives.”

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a weird dream I had a few nights ago that suggested that amongst all our other old recordings was this nasty prison execution reel. This will probably be properly included in the "Inmortalitas" series after I finish the first major story (fingers crossed).


End file.
